I'm a surgically trained podiatrist, but today my practice centers on a non-surgical approach — orthotics, posture and balance correction, and nutrition. I'm the only podiatrist in the country who still makes every orthotic herself, by hand, with no manufacturing company in between.

I do it the old-school way — taking an impression of the foot weight-bearing, not with the foot lifted in the air. I fill that impression with plaster, and once it hardens, I shape this replica of the foot into what it should be — not what it currently is. Creating that corrected, weight-bearing plaster model is a lost art in orthotics; it alone takes four to five hours, before any orthotic work even begins. Only once that model exists do I start making the orthotic itself.

Most orthotics you'll find are hard plastic, mass-produced, and completely unmoldable — one shape, forever. Mine aren't. I can adjust them as your foot changes, or temporarily reshape one to take pressure off an injury while it heals. I consider them about 95% effective, because they're built to move with you, not against you.

Making one properly takes real thought. You're not just looking at a foot in three dimensions — you're calculating how it moves through space, how the whole body shifts with it. I call it four-dimensional work, because no scan or video can capture it. Honestly, that's part of why I garden — it's where I do my best thinking, and where I unwind after a day of the kind of close, careful attention orthotic-making demands. The extra vegetables go to my neighbors, which I love just as much.